


intimacy

by foxmagpie



Series: little gifts [1]
Category: Good Girls (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-25
Updated: 2019-06-25
Packaged: 2020-05-19 15:57:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19360129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxmagpie/pseuds/foxmagpie
Summary: Post 2x07. Beth wonders and overthinks about Rio retrieving the dubby for him, and decides to call him in the middle of the night to ask him about it.---How is that Rio calling her Elizabeth feels so…intimate?Beth chews on her cheek. Maybe that’s why he does it, she thinks, but then she pushes the thought away.No, she decides. No, intimacy has no place in their… whatever this is.They’d had sex—in abar bathroom, not even a nice, clean bathroom—and they’d never even taken their clothes off, or kissed, or even made eye contact. She scoffs at herself, embarrassed that, even in her own private thoughts, she’d paired the idea ofRioandintimacytogether.But then… he’d gone and gotten the dubby, hadn’t he? He was furious with her for her stupidity, and he’d yelled at her, insulted her, called her nothing more than a drug dealer, told her to get her head on straight—but—after that, he’d still gone. That meant something, didn’t it?---





	intimacy

Before she heads to bed, Beth peeks her head into Jane’s room. The dubby is clutched tight in Jane’s little hands, and she sleeps peacefully, having it returned to her. Beth takes another sip of her bourbon (yet another glass) and smiles, but there’s a niggling feeling in the pit of her stomach. 

Dean, in all his oblivious glory, had not realized that the dubby had ever gone missing, so thankfully, Beth hadn’t needed to explain how it got lost, or how she (or rather, _he_ ) got it back. However, Dean was the one who’d brought in the mail and delivered the package to her. His eyes had asked her the question he couldn’t put into words, but Beth had ignored it, feigning misunderstanding. 

Dean was a bit of an idiot sometimes, but she could tell he’d pieced it together, that this mystery package was something from Rio, placed innocuously in their box as if could be any other piece of mail. Maybe it was the lack of postage, or maybe it was the hastily scrawled Elizabeth (underlined twice, for emphasis).

Does Dean remember? Does he remember when he was beaten bloody, tied up at their dining table, asking her, “ _What are you doing, Beth?_ ” 

Rio had echoed it, almost, as he walked towards her: “ _What_ are _you doing,_ Elizabeth?” 

Does Dean realize Rio is the only one who calls her that? 

Does Rio?

As she walks back down the stairs to her bedroom, Beth feels the heaviness of total exhaustion weighing on her. Between the lost dubby and all of these drops, Beth’s bone tired. When she finally crawls into bed, however, her mind’s wired, although the alcohol has made her feel a little fuzzy.

Why _does_ Rio call her Elizabeth? She’s never invited him to do so, and he must know she goes exclusively by Beth. 

Beth stares at her ceiling, willing her brain to shut off.

The only other times she hears her full name is at the doctor, the dentist, maybe jury duty (she’s briefly amused at the thought of being called in for jury duty again, considering). It’s only people that don’t know her that call her Elizabeth, and even then, when she corrects them, they call her “Beth” for the rest of her visit. 

So how is that Rio calling her Elizabeth feels so… _intimate_?

Beth chews on her cheek. Maybe that’s why he does it, she thinks, but then she pushes the thought away. 

No, she decides. No, intimacy has no place in their… whatever this is. 

They’d had sex—in a _bar bathroom_ , not even a nice, clean bathroom—and they’d never even taken their clothes off, or kissed, or even made eye contact. She scoffs at herself, embarrassed that, even in her own private thoughts, she’d paired the idea of _Rio_ and _intimacy_ together. 

But then… he’d gone and gotten the dubby, hadn’t he? He was furious with her for her stupidity, and he’d yelled at her, insulted her, called her nothing more than a drug dealer, told her to get her head on straight—but—after that, he’d still gone. That meant something, didn’t it?

But then… but then… She has so many sentences that could start with “but then” when she tries to piece together and figure out what anything he does means.

But then he’d stuffed it in an envelope and left it in her mailbox. He was there, at her house, just feet away from her, and she didn’t get a text, a call, anything. Usually, he was all about the surprise drop-in, the secret meet-ups in the dark on her picnic bench, and now he didn’t even give her a heads up so she could avoid having Dean find it and look at her in that way? What was that about?

Beth rolls over, readjusting her pillows.

 _Unless…_?

Unless he’d _wanted_ Dean to find it?

Beth gives up, shuffles out of bed, into the kitchen. She takes her empty glass out of the sink. She walks to the bar cart in the living room. There’s two bottles of bourbon on the cart: one, almost empty, that she’d bought for herself, and then the one that Rio had left for her in that storage unit. She could finish off the one bottle, get rid of it, but she reaches for Rio’s bottle again. After the liquid drains from the bottle to the glass, there’s about half left. 

She needs to dull her thoughts, which, contrary to her expectations, had only sharpened the longer she thought about them.

Rio loved a good show. The smashed glass of the corvette flashes into her mind. How long had he been sitting in that car, waiting for her to show up at Boland Motors? 

She remembers the way her entire insides had turned to ice when he asked her, “You didn’t tell him yet?”

She’d barely even thought about the possibility of Dean ever finding out—she’d never considered the possibility of telling him, and there was Rio, amused, letting Dean piece it together as he said, “Oh, come on, ma, it’s too good.”

 _Ma_. It gave her butterflies, hearing that. How was it that he could make her feel dread and excitement in the exact same moment? “Don’t,” she’d told him, and she pleaded with him with her eyes. 

And then… he didn’t. She asked, so he didn’t. 

Dean had bought it, she thought, this shift to partners and percentages. He didn’t want to believe that Beth had let this man touch her, so he didn’t. It was as simple as that.

Beth feels her cheeks burn as she remembers it all. God, did Dean _seriously_ ask him who HR was? She rubs between her eyebrows. Rio knows she _married_ this man, this man who asked the guy with the tire iron, smashing up the most expensive car on the lot and upping his cut with every idiotic comment, who HR was. Jesus.

Her vibrator could attest that it was a good show, though. Wholly unnecessary, yes, but the performance was—whew—something else. 

Beth had briefly considered that maybe the whole thing had erupted out of some sense of possessiveness or even jealousy that she was still with Dean after their tryst. But besides a few comments alluding to their bathroom break, all meant to make her flush red, all meant to disarm her, Rio hadn’t really done anything. He didn’t try to get her into bed (or rather, against a wall) again, so obviously it didn’t mean much to him. Jealousy was not the likely culprit—Rio just got off on making other people squirm. 

Did Rio consider returning the dubby a good show? Was he one-upping her husband by being the one to take care of her family? She doubted it. There was only a 50/50 chance Dean would be the one to find it, and Rio would be deprived of whatever pleasure he would get by seeing Dean’s face piecing it all together. 

So what gives?

Beth pours herself one more glass, downs it, and then returns to the kitchen to fish her phone out of her purse.

She scrolls down through her contacts, finds Ron, and dials. (She thought it best not to program him under “Rio,” and she’d been so amused by Annie’s absurdity when she seriously believed he might be named Ron, of all things). 

He picks up after the third ring, but he doesn’t say hello. Beth is disarmed by the silence, loses all of her nerve.

“You called me,” he says, finally. She can hear his annoyance and thinks she can hear the sleep in his voice. She must have woken him. She glances at the microwave clock: it’s just past midnight. It’s weird, thinking of him doing something as normal as sleeping. 

“You went in the house,” she says, accusatory, echoing his earlier furious realization. 

She imagines his jaw doing that thing, that thing that it does—the only telltale sign, often, that he’s doing everything he can to maintain control.

“Elizabeth,” he drawls, his voice a warning. 

“You _yelled_ at me.”

He doesn’t respond, but he doesn’t hang up.

“You yelled at me and made me feel so—so stupid for going inside.” 

There’s a slight slur to her words, or she’s saying them too loud or something, because Rio says, “You had a lot to drink tonight, yeah?”

“I’m drinking your bourbon,” she tells him. 

“That right?” he asks, mulling it over. “Hang up the phone, Elizabeth.” He’s gentle but commanding. He’s tired of her nonsense, but she can’t stop.

“I want to know.”

He lets her statement linger over the phone line for a minute. She can picture his eyes squinting at her, his eyebrows furrowed in curious exasperation. “What’s that?” 

“You said—you said that you go to jail or you die, if you mess up—you said that.”

“Yeah,” he says, pointed, sharp, letting her know he meant it then and he means it now.

“And then you went in.”

“What part you havin’ trouble with?”

The gears in her head are turning faster than she can keep up with, and she’s having trouble following their conversation, he’s contributing so little to it. The torn-open envelope is still on the island, and she traces the E’s (which look absurd, frankly—but it’s so him). 

Beth’s voice softens. “Why didn’t you come in?”

“I thought you were yellin’ at me for _goin’_ in. What are you on about?”

“I don’t know,” she admits, honestly. She’s tired. “I don’t know why you went in there for me, and I don’t know why you didn’t come in when you were right there. I don’t know. I can’t make sense of it. I can’t figure you out.”

She closes her eyes in embarrassment when he doesn’t answer right away. She can feel that she’s being needy and weird, overstepping their carefully marked lines. 

“We’re partners,” he says. There’s still frustration in his voice—she can tell he wants this phone call to end and her to stop badgering him, but the simplicity of the explanation washes over her. She doesn’t know what to say to that, but then… he hasn’t hung up yet.

“But it was dangerous...”

“...For _you_.” He emphasizes the difference. “It aint the same. We aint the same.”

 _We aint the same_. The comment stings a little, reminds her of all the ways what she wants could never work. But God, did he ever speak in more than two or three sentences at a time? Did he even know what a paragraph was? 

“It was still dangerous,” she says. She knows this to be true, even if he won’t acknowledge it. Yes, Rio had his gun and his boys, she was sure, but that house had guns and men, too. And he went in to retrieve a baby blanket. For her.

“Why didn’t you come in?” she asks again, bolder. “You were right there, at my mailbox. You’ve broken in here too many times for me to count. You were right there.”

“Goodnight, Elizabeth,” he says. 

“Dean’s the one that found it—the envelope,” she says hurriedly. Why is she telling him this? Why can’t she shut up? 

It’s quiet, but she can hear that he laughs on the other end of the phone. It’s not amused, more… triumphant. Maybe. She’s drunk, and obviously in a mood to overanalyze.

“Is that what you wanted? Dean to find it? The way you wanted Dean to guess—at the dealership. To guess what we—you know.”

“What we... _what_?” he asks her, straightforward. He wants to hear her say it. He’s teasing her now.

“Oh, stop. You _know_.”

“Yeah. Yeah, you right. I remember it vividly,” he says. He sounds almost… satisfied. There’s no trace of annoyance now. She imagines him smirking on the other end of the line. Beth feels a blush spread across her chest. 

“Dean’s upset,” she admits. 

“Good,” Rio responds. His voice softens, and with finality he says, “G’night, Elizabeth.”

She hears the soft click of him hanging up the phone. How is it that she can have a whole conversation with him and still be as confused as she was before talking to him? He gave her no answers, no insights—it was like he didn’t want to talk about the dubby at all. 

She hadn’t thanked him.

Beth sets the glass in the sink, stands there for a moment, remembers the other night with Dean standing in front of this sink. He’d hesitated when she’d commanded him to just do it—she almost thought he was going to walk away, piecing together what thoughts were really running through her head as she stared at the picnic table on the back porch. But they had gone through with it. It was sloppy and badly angled, slightly uncomfortable and not very pleasurable. He’d tried to get her to turn around, to reposition, but she couldn’t look at him, so she’d started thinking about Rio’s hand splayed on her thigh, the way he had ripped down her panties. He’d fucked her so good—she hadn’t even known sex could be like that. As Dean had moved behind her, all rhythmically strange and wrong, she thought about Rio thrusting into her as he held her up against that wall, one hand hooked under her leg, the other gripping her ass. She’d moaned, thinking about it, the thoughts turning her on more than the actual sex she was having—and Dean, misreading her pleasure, enjoying the sound, believing he was eliciting those noises from her, finished, spent. 

Now, having a comparison point for the first time in her life, it’s painful to think that Dean is the last person she’s slept with. 

When she falls into her bed again, she’s asleep almost instantly. Her dreams mutate and shapeshift, mostly incomprehensible, but when she wakes, one image stands out: She’s naked, and Rio, dressed in his usual all-black attire, is holding her against a dirty wall, moving in and out of her wonderfully slowly. She realizes they’re in that drug den, and a gun is pointed at Rio’s head, but he ignores it, pressing a hard kiss against her mouth that he turns into something deeper and softer. When the gun moves from the back of Rio’s skull to Beth’s cheek, Rio doesn’t break the kiss. His eyes are closed, and, blindly, he pulls out his gun and shoots the men that dare to threaten her. 

Beth wakes up and, refusing to try and interpret the dream, pulls out her vibrator.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic, so please be gentle :)


End file.
